


Perks of the Job

by Ruusverd



Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [32]
Category: Echoes of the Fall - Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bronze Age AU, shapeshifter AU, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26358895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruusverd/pseuds/Ruusverd
Summary: A peek at the future of the New Waters tribe.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [32]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863010
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	Perks of the Job

**Author's Note:**

> Probably going to be updating this less frequently as I've run out of finished material. There's at least one more chronologically that's mostly finished to tie up the story, then the rest will be going back and filling in gaps as I feel inspired to do so.
> 
> Also I wrote much of this under the influence of strong allergy medicine, so if anything looks odd that's probably why.

Accepting Aripey into the tribe seemed to be sufficient signal to all the Crown of the World that the rumors about their strange tribe being a haven for outcasts were true. If Wolf and Tiger could live together, surely no one would be turned away.

In the deepest part of that winter an old Boar man with his two grandchildren in tow came staggering into their village. Their own village had been raided by the Wolf in retribution for some wrongdoing or other and none of the rest of the Boar villages would take them for fear of bringing the Wolves down on their own heads as well. It was a strain for the village to stretch their winter provisions far enough for three extra mouths, but they had prepared on the side of caution and with careful rationing and Aripey and Ciri now among their hunters they managed.

In the spring, a Coyote who didn’t wish to become the mate of a man twice her age came to them, hand in hand with the Doe she’d chosen instead. The Crow and the Coyote had always had an odd rivalry, fighting each other as they both followed after the Wolf, but they also had much in common and Jaskier immediately declared the Coyote girl to be his new apprentice storyteller. Her imagination proved to be as fertile as his own, and the rest of the tribe unanimously decided that neither of them were allowed to teach any of the tribe’s children their history, even if that was the traditional purpose of having storytellers.

The next to arrive was a Plains Dog, apparently from pure curiosity. The people of the Plains Dog had once been Wolves, he said, and he wanted to stay for a season or two to see that part of his ancestor’s history, though he had no intention of staying permanently or trading his soul for a wolf’s. At that point Geralt gave up on trying to counter the rumors. If the stories had spread so far that people were showing up from as far away as the Plains, it was much too late for him to stop them.

In a few years the village had grown to a small but flourishing tribe. They would never be powerful enough to be a threat to their neighbors or large enough to upset the balance of the world, but they existed as an odd but mostly accepted part of the Crown of the World. Not everyone who came was allowed to stay; they didn’t tolerate any attempts to ignite old wars, or attempts to establish the dominance of one totem over another, but in time stories of those rules spread as well and those whose hearts were too full of hatred to live in peace knew to stay away.

Geralt remained chief for many years, and when he felt his strength declining he voluntarily passed the title to Ciri. He continued to advise Ciri as needed, but declared his intention to devote his remaining years to being Yennefer’s mate and honorary grandfather to all the tribe's children.

“You do know not every child you see is your grandchild, don’t you?” Yennefer asked him one day, looking up dryly from the accounts of their winter stores she was inspecting for Ciri. The curls under her scarf might be frosted with gray, but she still had the sharpest mind for numbers of anyone in the tribe. “I’m almost positive the one attached to your leg is _Milva’s_ granddaughter.”

“I helped raise her father,” he told Yennefer firmly, “As far as I’m concerned that makes her my granddaughter.”

“The one drooling on your shirt only came here with his mother half a year ago,” Yennefer countered. “You didn’t raise _his_ mother. Neither of us knew the Leopard _had_ people before they turned up.”

“You know my memory tends to slip,” he told her, bouncing the Leopard boy on his hip and shuffling awkwardly towards the hearth while Milva’s granddaughter, who would one day have to decide between the Hawk and the Deer, clung to his leg with all four limbs, giggling every time he took a step. “I can never remember which ones belong to the children I helped raise, so I’m claiming all of them just in case.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your memory, it hasn’t caused you problems in _years_ _,”_ Yennefer laughed, “but if that’s the story you’re going with I won’t tell anyone differently.”

“I didn’t say it was causing me _problems,”_ he winked at her conspiratorially. “Besides, none of their parents are complaining.”

“Of course they’re not. Even if everyone here didn’t love you, you’re Geralt White Wolf. You were chief for all those years without ever being challenged, and now your daughter is chief in your place. No one will complain if their children get to claim someone with your reputation as their surrogate grandparent.”

“I suppose being chief all that time had to be good for _something,”_ Geralt grumbled, gently prying his long hair out of the Leopard boy’s fist. “Don’t chew on that, please.”

“Of course you would see surrogate grandchildren as the only benefit of such a reputation,” Yennefer smiled at him fondly.

“You like them as much as I do, or you wouldn’t have spent so many winters teaching all of them to read and write,” Geralt said.

Yennefer hummed thoughtfully. “Perhaps I simply didn’t wish to live in a tribe of uneducated barbarians. Everyone knows you’re the soft one of the two of us. I tolerate the screaming horde of younglings running around underfoot all hours of the day only for your sake.”

“I know better, but if that’s the story you’re going with I won’t tell anyone,” Geralt repeated her words back at her. He carefully set the boy down and detached the child clinging to his leg, then sat down between them, wishing he could Step without losing the ability to speak. The wolf wasn’t as affected by age as his human form, and he’d started finding it easier to keep up with the youngsters while Stepped the last few years.

“Who are we not telling what?” Ciri ducked through the door flap, tossing her helm into the corner carelessly and starting to pull off her armor.

Yennefer’s lips thinned briefly in disapproval, but Geralt knew she’d long since given up scolding Ciri for leaving her things scattered around the longhouse. “Your father’s memory is failing him, I’m afraid,” she said lightly. “He can’t remember how many grandchildren he has.”

“Geralt’s memory is better than mine,” Ciri laughed. “He just thinks ‘grandchild’ means ‘child who has crossed my line of sight.’”

Geralt huffed. “It is very unkind of you both to team up against me,” he told them in mock offense.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we both know you too well,” Yennefer said, amusement clear in her voice. She handed Ciri the inventory she’d been working on. “The corn will be sufficient and we’ll have enough winter fodder for the new sheep if all goes well, but we should try to get more salt before the weather turns, just to be safe.”

Geralt eyed the pile of armor as Ciri glanced over the figures. “I see your armor is still clean, was it a false alarm?”

“Not false, just overstated. It wasn’t a ‘small warband,’ just a couple of young idiots who’d been listening too much to their elders’ grumbling, trying to earn a name for themselves by raiding us.” She grinned rakishly, “For some reason they were a lot less eager to make trouble when a _real_ warband jumped out at them.”

“Are you going to go to their tribes for recompense?” Yennefer asked, frowning. “Getting their elders involved might discourage them from trying again.”

Ciri shook her head. “No harm was done, it’s not worth the effort. It looked like most of them were Winter Runners anyway, so it wouldn’t do any good. Even if the chief reprimanded them while we were watching, that evil old priest of his would just start ranting about us as soon as we left and get them all fired up again. Bloody Winter Runners,” Ciri groaned, sitting on the floor next to Geralt and putting her head on his shoulder, “I wish the hateful bastard would trip over his robe and bash his brains out on his own anvil.”

“That’s very specific, you must have been thinking about this,” Geralt laughed.

“Or he could just work himself into such a rage that his head burst, I’m not particular about it.”

“At least they’re too far away to cause us much trouble,” Yennefer said. “And they’re the only tribe of the Wolf that’s hostile to us.”

Ciri smacked Geralt’s leg with the back of her hand. “They’re the only tribe who didn’t get one of your brothers, that’s the problem. Why couldn’t you have had one more brother? He could have joined the Winter Runners and we would have been covered.”

Geralt elected not to mention that he’d actually had _several_ more brothers before the massacre. He knew she wasn’t serious and there was no point making her feel guilty on top of her annoyance. “If you want me to go tell their chief to do a better job keeping his young hunters in line I will,” he offered instead. “Though you’re right that it probably wouldn’t do much to improve their attitude.”

“No,” Ciri said. “It would just be a long trip for you with no gain for us. Besides,” she chuckled, “the children would be heartbroken if I sent ‘Grandfather’ away. I’d have to sleep with one eye open the whole time you were gone, or they might put frogs in my bed or mud in my boots.”

Geralt scoffed disbelievingly. “They would do no such thing, they’re all perfectly well behaved,” he insisted, reaching out with one hand and towing the Leopard boy back by his ankle before he could crawl onto the hearth. He set the boy in his lap and glanced around to check on his other charge, but the girl seemed content for the moment to play with a set of wooden animal figures similar to the ones Geralt had made for her father when he was the same age. Geralt had lost count of how many of those figures he’d made over the years, but the children liked them and it gave him something to do with his hands in the winter.

“They’re well behaved for _you,_ maybe.” Ciri gave the boy a suspicious look. “I remember what _I_ was like as a child too well to trust them.”

“You were a lovely child, I have no complaints.”

Ciri transferred her suspicious look to him, “I distinctly remember trying repeatedly to kill Cahir when I was eight.”

“It was a difficult situation, perfectly understandable,” Geralt said, waving a hand dismissively. “I wanted to kill him at the time, too.”

“Regardless of what the children might or might not do, I don’t want you to go to the Winter Runners either,” Yennefer interjected before Ciri could respond. “The whole point of you stepping down was that you wouldn’t have to these things anymore.”

“Then we are all agreed, because I don’t particularly want to go myself.” Geralt glanced at the angle of the sun coming in the windows. “I’d better get these two back to their mothers, it must be close to time for them to eat.”

Geralt handed the boy to Ciri so he could get up, chuckling when she grimaced and held him at arm’s length.

“Here, take him back before he leaks something on me.”

Geralt rolled his eyes, but took the baby back and held out his hand for the older child to take. “If only those young idiots had known, the fastest way to send the chief of the New Waters tribe running is to hand her a baby.”

Ciri made a face at him, and Geralt laughed as he ducked out the door.

* * *

When the door flap fell closed behind Geralt, Ciri felt the smile slipping from her face.

“What’s wrong?” Yennefer asked, looking intently at Ciri with the expression that had convinced her in childhood that the priestess could read her mind.

Ciri chewed her lip for a few moments before answering. “Do you ever think about Emhyr?” she asked Yennefer.

The only indication Yennefer gave of surprise was a slow blink. “Not any more often than I can help,” she said. “What brought him to mind?”

“He said he wanted to unite the whole world into one people, to stop the fighting between tribes. Did we do what he wanted after all?”

“No, we didn’t,” Yennefer said firmly. “For one thing, a small remote village is hardly uniting the whole world, and for another what we have here bears only a superficial similarity to what he wanted. He spoke of peace and unity, but what he wanted was power. The Kasra already rules a nation of many shapes. Dragon, Heron, Turtle, Toad, Chameleon, Iguana, all the inhabitants of the river and its estuaries are part of the Sun River Nation, he simply wanted to expand that rule to cover the whole world. Everyone in the New Waters tribe is here because they chose to be, not because you went out and forced them into your shadow.”

Ciri nodded. “I know that, and I didn’t want to say anything in front of Geralt because I know it would hurt him to know I asked, but those troublemakers we ran off… they were terrified of us. They looked at us like we were monsters.”

“The young always fear too much or too little,” Yennefer said. “Particularly those who’ve had bad teaching. It’s fortunate that they feared you enough to run away before anyone was hurt by their foolishness. I wouldn’t give it too much importance.” Yennefer looked away, thinking for a moment, then looked back to Ciri. “It’s no bad thing to inspire a certain amount of fear in other tribes. Even the Winter Runners don’t dare to confront us openly, they only speak hate and turn a blind eye when their young hunters come to harass us. But have we ever given them reason to fear being attacked in their own homes?”

“No,” Ciri admitted.

“And in all the years your father was chief, did you ever know anyone here to be truly afraid of him, afraid that he’d hurt them?”

“No,” Ciri said, smiling a bit despite herself. Sometimes when people first arrived at the New Waters village they would be wary of Geralt due to his strange appearance, but it always passed quickly. Underneath his rough edges, Geralt had a sort of gentle patience about him that Ciri herself struggled to emulate when dealing with people.

“Is anyone here afraid that _you_ will hurt them?”

“No, not really. On the training grounds maybe, but not in general.”

“Then that’s all the knowledge you need to know that neither of you are in the least like Emhyr Kasra. The two of you only inspire fear in those who would come to hurt us or drive us out, not in your own people or in those who are content to leave us in peace.”

Ciri nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Of course it does,” Yennefer said primly. “I may not have lived a hundred lives like some of the Serpent’s children, but I know enough to tell a good leader from a bad one.”

Outside there was a loud crash and a flurry of human and animal voices started shouting. Ciri felt a surge of alarm, but then recognized that most of the voices were either cheering or laughing. Probably not a full-scale attack then.

“Speaking of being a good leader,” Yennefer said wryly.

“I should probably go make sure nothing too important is being destroyed out there,” Ciri said with an aggrieved sigh. “I’ve changed my mind, I’m not ready for this. Geralt needs to be chief for another ten or twenty years. I can’t believe people actually fight over who gets to be chief.”

“These things are known: those who most want to rule others are the least suited to do so,” Yennefer said serenely, picking up her writing board and a fresh sheet of paper. “Let me know if you need my help.”

Ciri sighed again dramatically, then pushed herself to her feet and shouldered her way out of the longhouse to face whatever ruckus was going on. _No wonder Geralt was so eager to hand the job over to me,_ she thought. _That sneaky Wolf, he’s ‘too old’ to be chief the same way he’s ‘too forgetful’ to remember how many grandchildren he has._ She wondered if she was too old to get away with putting frogs in his bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Sneaky Douglas Adams quote in there at the end, but it fit too well to resist.
> 
> The nasty Winter Runners priest might be Kalameshli Takes Iron from the books, or he might be another priest with a similar personality. Who knows? I don't. :)


End file.
